If you always defend those who you love (even when they are wrong), you do them no favor - you simply make them more vulnerable for the times when you won't be there.

Very nice post and really good metaphor with the Christmas dish and Blizzard destroying its traditions in 2018. Funny thing I wrote similar stuff on another forum - I feel we, PC gamers, are dying species. And Blizzard is just a corporation with one and only goal - to maximize profits. If PC gaming brings no profits, they won't release PC games. Simple as that.

I myself always loved Blizzard since D1 and played a lot of WC3 and SC back in the days. Those two games were super popular in Bulgaria and that is a reason we had gold (WC3) and bronze (SC) medalists at WCG events. At these times strategy games weren't my favorite genre however. Ironically it was not the aRPG genre too. It was the classic RPG genre with games like Baldur's Gate and Fallout. With D2 that slowly changed through the years - the aRPG genre served for more replayability and became my favorite one, although I played hell of a BG2 (solo insane poverty) and F2 (mods and stuff).

Right now I have to say first and foremost I am an aRPG fan. Then comes Diablo. I don't devote time to other genres, besides playing some HS from time to time. But HS is pretty much done as mechanics and platform. The only thing I am looking forward in the PC gaming (expecting some revolution in it) is connected with the aRPG genre. No matter whether this will be D4 or some other game from another studio, the aRPG genre could really boom if there is a new age engine in the future allowing for optimal player - AI - environment interaction (think D3 combat on steroids). I even thought of writing a book how the different aRPG elements in such a potential game should be organized to deliver the players the optimal experience. But who's gonna read it? Those that don't create games. And those that do, read other stuff - like how to extract the maximum from the MTX...

As a conclusion I have to add I always said what had to be said for the good future of aRPGs and Diablo. This made me a lot of forum enemies through the years (mostly stupid kids that bot), but also a lot of friends who sooner or later realized I was right. Whether our words will matter in the end, we have to see (they might finally decide to announce D4 in 2019, who knows).

I call their private leagues lite modding, because being able to modify the game in ways that are specified by the developers is essentially a liter version of general modding, in which you can modify all possible variables.

Right now these leagues allow 5 parameters to be modded (like no stash or no magic/rare item drops), but this is just the beginning. What will follow is more parameters being added with each and every patch, essentially allowing the player to have the exact gameplay experience he wants.

To relate this to D3 (for those not familiar with PoE), it would look like you could start a Season with certain options you could choose from. For example I would create a private Season with:

- Duration: 2 weeks

- Paragon cap: 800

- No ancient/primal drops

- No set item drops

- No party aka SSF

This gives the player total freedom to enjoy the game with like-minded people who are after the same experience. The game suddenly starts serving the player's needs instead of creating them. And this is only a lite version of modding, imagine what would happen if D3 was modding capable and skills/items could be modified.

The reason I created this thread is to share with more people how great modding could be, and also to kind of thank the PoE developers for creating more freedom in their game than ever before with placing a link to their forums.

I already shared in another thread on this forum and on many in the official Diablo forums in the past - the only way to save D3 is to give more freedom to the players and the best way to achieve this is by making D3 modding capable. We as a community have to stand behind this and demand it from the D3 team, because D4 may very well turn out to be one big scheme created to only make money, instead of evolving the aRPG genre further.

expect more dumbed down, full of micro shits and loot boxes game they will call diablo 4

That is something I warned 10 months ago and insisted the community/developers not to forget D3 - needless to say I got down-voted by the majority of readers. People are so obsessed with the D4 mirage that they forget how quickly it could transform from a "perfect game" to a "p2w nightmare".

Demanding however IS in our capabilities. As a community we can achieve almost anything when we are united and that showed pretty good with the youtube trailers - here on Earth, not the Moon. We can choose some people (like the Red Shirt Hero) to represent the community demands and have a chat with the Diablo team. I am sick of fake CMs who don't deliver our feedback to the developers and the guys in charge. The Diablo community needs people that can be trusted to represent it.

The time to act is now however - every day that passes, in which we are not constructive and don't make our vision of WHAT we want clear is a day of victory for the suit folks.

P.S. We can always find other aRPG games - Torchlight Frontiers invite-only alpha starts in a week from now. That is not the point, however. We all want the best for Diablo and there may not exist a better window for us to change things. It is now or mobile.

It will be late for D3 when there is an aRPG with a better engine. Right now there is none. Modders could fix all problems for a few years and with the great community we have it could get even faster than that.

But we have to demand modding from them via a petition or something and if we don't do it now (when they are hearing lol) we will be left only with the D4 fantasy which can go poof any moment they decide to monetize the game in an ugly way.

Because they have no idea how to properly do it. Modding solves both the PvP and the CR problems - we get the alpha Arenas and guys like you that enjoy PvP jump on it, while those that enjoy PvMvP jump on the CR.

Another thing modders can add to D3 is an improved monster AI - most people simply have no idea how much this influences the difficulty. So don't count this type of e-Sport out.

So why make games for "west" players when mobile market (asia players) is several times bigger (more money) then west (us/eu).

If they are only interested in ROI (and we know they are since Activision merge) then there would be indeed no need to do that in 5-6 years from now. D4 may be the last of the Diablo series to ever release on PC.

That is why we are left with very few choices as aRPG fans:

1) Forget Diablo series and look elsewhere

2) Wait for D4 and hope they don't blunder it

3) Build further on D3 and demand modding for it

I kind of don't like 1) since there will pass at least 6-7 years for an aRPG with higher quality engine than D3 to appear. 2) is scary to even hope for - even if they hire the PoE developer to join their team, the marketing wing could blunder the whole game with idiotic microtransactions and loot boxes (and we very well know what they are capable of after the Blizzcon 2018 fiasco). So, I say we go with 3), make some petition and demand modding for D3. Once we have this we can easily change the game to the level of PoE (fix drop chances, redo itemization, redo character progression) and build an e-Sport around an improved version of Challenge Rifts to solidify the game presence even without new content (when modders stop with it).

Pagan Online, which is set to launch on PC in 2019, has players battling through a demonic dystopia based on “pre-Christian mythology” in a game that aims to be equal parts brutal, manic, and mystical. Registration for pre-launch tests known as Trials is now open at Pagan-Online.com.

The developers say that the game will be a new take on the hack-and-slash action role-playing game that is built on the framework of classic dungeon crawlers but makes use of a MOBA-style combat experience.

D4: Possible announcement in 2020. If it is not a top-down view it is a no buy for me and the logic is it won't be. It will look flashy and colorful in a 3d perspective allowing people to spend tons of cash on it for cosmetic items.

aRPG/MMO in another universe: I'd love to see a post-apocalyptic (Fallout-like) setting done by a top studio like Blizzard. I think such setting gives a lot more freedom to its designers and would kind of change our focus from the typical things present in Diablo.

Summary: Whatever comes next, it will be oriented with the idea to make money. It won't be done just for the sake of experimenting with something new, it will be well calculated money machine. That said I don't expect miracles. For such to happen passion and freedom are needed. And money does not have to be your main goal. It has to be the art and the gamers. Kind of unrealistic things for the big studios. But at least one can enjoy the AAA cinematics from them. They seem to sell the products well.